BELL, Fla. — Sarah L. Spirit was 22 years old and eight months pregnant with her fourth child when she called the police in desperation: Her father was violent, she was afraid of him, and she had nowhere to go.

“He pushed me against the refrigerator really hard then closed his hands really hard on my face and caused me pain,” she wrote in the summer of 2008, when she went to a Gilchrist County Court to seek a domestic violence injunction against her father, Don C. Spirit. “I am very scared of him. I know what he is capable of.”